When Is A Shooting Just A Shooting?

September 6, 2006

When Mr. Jaoura, a 38-year-old blacksmith and father of five, opened fire on Monday at a group of tourists in downtown Amman, killing a Briton and wounding six others, he became the latest in a new breed of terrorist, stirred by boiling anger and frustration, and taking matters into his own hands, security officials say.

While security officials are largely focused on organized terror groups like Al Qaeda, lone attackers like Mr. Jaoura present a new challenge. They are hard to track and even harder to stop, making them an especially difficult target for the police and security officials.

"No force on earth could have prevented an attack like this," said a senior Jordanian security official, who said Mr. Jaoura was surprisingly forthcoming under interrogation. "He was not an Islamist. He was isolated, and he did it on his own."

With tensions soaring high in much of the Middle East in the aftermath of Israel's war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the risk of copycat attacks has grown higher.

"Lone acts like this, done without any planning, reflect the general mood of anger and frustration here," said Muhammad Abu Rumman, an expert on Islamist movements at the Jordanian daily Al Ghad. "There is a huge gap between the government and the people, and the government cannot control this sort of thing anymore."